‘Virtual visits’ win Singapore innovation award (AUS)

Australia’s Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS), which is testing a telehealth service (=telemedicine), won the Outstanding ICT Innovation award in the Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Awards 2013, part of the 4th Ageing Asia Investment Forum in Singapore. Nurse virtual visits were demonstrated between ‘patient’ Singapore’s Senior Minister of State, Mr. Chan Chun Sing, and RDNS nurse Amanda Murray in Melbourne, checking his blood pressure and ‘medication’. The ‘Healthy, Happy and at Home’ project over the past two years was developed by the RDNS with the Victorian State Government under its Broadband Enabled Innovation Program (BEIP); participating partners are Telstra, Healthe Tech (using the original Intel Health Guide) and La Trobe University. RDNS telehealth wins international ICT award (ITWire), Asia TodayVideo (3:38)Hat tip to reader George Margelis of Care Innovations Australia.

Comments

The key to the success of this project was the early engagement with the clinicians from RDNS to determine what their pain points were, what simple interventions could make a difference to the lives of their patients, and then focus on that and not feel obligated to use all the functionality of the available hardware just because they had it.

They are evolving their solution, but they are focusing on clinical solution, not technical solutions to problems that appear important on paper but in reality are not an issue.

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Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:

• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.

• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.

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